Esna Temple

Continuing our Nile Cruise

Esna Town and Temple

The Motor Ship Queen Isis arrived at the Esna Barrage while it was still dark and as we traversed the Lock the morning light enabled us see its true size.

Esna Lock at Night

   The roadway over the barrage has swing bridges for when ships are using the Lock, which is virtually non stop, as one can see huge queues of ships on either side waiting to get through the bottle neck, as every year sees more and more cruise ships being built to cope with those wanting a Nile Cruise.

    Finding a place to park the ship isn't easy, and they are lined up, side by side, 7 or 8 abreast, meaning that if you are on the outside of the stack a passenger has to walk through the entrance foyer of all the other ships to get to the dock side to go ashore. Quite handy, really, as it gives one a chance to see what the other ships have to offer, and if the floor show is better on another ship, well, they are quite happy to have you spend your money in their ship's gift shop and bar.

    Eventually, after a very good breakfast, we ran the gauntlet of the narrow shopping bazaar up into the centre of town, and the Esna Temple. Very little can be seen of the temple until one is right on top of it, because, it is sat down below street level, in a great big hole. Over the years the ground has built up around the temple until this century when there was very little left above the ground to be seen except the roof.

   After buying a ticket at the kiosk one descends some steep wooden steps down into the hole, a hole deep enough to swallow an estate of semi detached houses. The temple consists of only the Hypostyle Hall, the rest of it still being swallowed up under the houses to the rear. This did help preserve the quality of the carvings and the original colours of the reliefs can plainly be seen.

   The Temple is well worth a visit, if only for the magnificent reliefs but that is all there is to see, until the rest of the temple is still to be excavated. On our 1989 trip there were hundreds, if not thousands of tourists all wanting to see the temple, a few too many for comfort, however, during Gulf War period we had the whole place to ourselves, except for the chattering sparrows.



   We didn't even have to buy a ticket, (we always contribute to the economy whenever we can), the guards were just sat around at the cafe, over the street, drinking tea, and keeping an eye on the entrance to the temple, over a game of draughts. "Saba el hair, Docktar", they said, and waved us down the steep steps into the hole, as I replied "Saba el nuir, el hamdul Allah."

    Sandra soon located some recently excavated statues, her favourite being the lioness goddess Sekhmet, while I busied myself carefully searching through the newly disturbed rubble for signs of anything that had been overlooked.

The lioness goddess Sekhmet and my little pussy cat, or is it the Jackal-headed god Anubis?

    There was plenty of pottery chards about, ancient and modern, and the rubbish of the town littered the place, with broken glass, bottle tops, lumps of plaster, animal bones and crisp packets. I am always on the look out for the sign of anything blue, hopefully the blue of Faience Jewellery work, but usually it turns out to be, a bit of modern plaster, or a toffee wrapper, but today my luck was in as I located a tiny, tiny, piece of blue, the size of a match head.

    I couldn't make out what it was until I found another piece and realise that they fitted together to make a tiny little charm of, was it a cat? Or was it the jackal-headed god Anubis? A miniscule hole through the charm showed it was part of a string of beads, of which, despite frantic searching, I found no more. Ah well, another day, another find, it's all there for those with eyes to see.

   All too soon, on our initial visit, it was back to the boat, and the really big problem of the day. Which one of a multitude of similar looking boats was ours? There were so many rows of boats that we took a taxi along the waterfront trying to find our boat. Never were there so many parked in so little space.

   But we found it in the end, and after ensuring that everyone was safely back on board we played musical chairs with the other boats until we managed to get a clear passage to continue our journey, up river, to the Temple of Edfu, and as we clear the waterfront another ship moves in to take our place.

Esna Picture Show

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And as we have dinner on the boat one guest learns what happens if she can not make up her mind which dish she would like, when, lots of dishes are put in front of her and she is asked to try them all and then she can have the one she likes best. This is why passengers can leave the ship an awful lot heavier than when they first set foot on it. The food is delicious and calorific, the Egyptians being the only people I know who can add more sugar into condensed milk for their fabulous cakes and pastries.

Chose what you want from the samples and then get your main meal.

Tomorrow we dock at Esna and visit the temple complex, the most original one left in the country, the same as Dendara with lots of detailed reliefs but with the outer enclosure walls and inner court yards in tact.

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